REVIEW OF EXISTING LCA STUDIES ON WASTE WATER TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES

The EU research project “NEPTUNE” is related to the EU Water Framework Directive and focused on the development of new waste water treatment technologies (WWTT) for municipal waste water. The sustainability of these WWTTs is going to be assessed by the use of life cycle assessment (LCA). New life cycle impact assessment methods on pathogens, whole effluent toxicity and micropollutants will be developed within the project. As part of this work a review of more than 20 previous LCA studies on WWTTs has been done and the findings are summarised on this poster. The review is focused on the relative importance of the different life cycle stages and the individual impact categories in the total impact from the waste water treatment, and the degree to which micropollutants, pathogens and whole effluent toxicity have been included in earlier studies. The results show that more than 30 different WWTT (and even more treatment trains/scenarios) have already been the subject of more or less detailed LCAs. All life cycle stages may be important and all impact categories (except stratospheric ozone depletion) typically included in LCAs may show significance depending on the actual scenario. Potential impacts of pathogens and whole effluent toxicity have not been included in any study, and only a few studies have included micropollutants (in total less than 20 different micropollutants).